The real life of a child cult survivor

Tag Archives: therapy

“You loved me,” I said, “when I was at my lowest. Yet, I didn’t quite know you were loving me. I was in tears so many days. You held me. Together we traveled the tunnels of rewound memories, finding ourselves sometimes on clouds and others in quagmire. Through these times, these deep struggles, you were always there, even when I wasn’t aware of your presence. Now, as I look into your eyes, clear and concise, I am elated that you were patient. You waited. You got to know each part of me explicitly. We have grown into one moving energy, crafted through the moments I struggled to find you, calling you to please come to me as you were wandering. Today I am grateful. Today I say thank you. Thank you for returning to me; for finding me and being inside my wholeness.”

I can feel her very strongly as soon as I walk through the door. We are the only two people here in the lobby. I am waiting to see my therapist. This woman at the table is filling out paperwork, it appears, for her first time here.

She has shoulder length, dark brown hair, and is nicely dressed in a skirt, boots and a matching jacket. I sense that she feels her appearance will make her seem less “crazy”; if she dresses nicely. She doesn’t know that she isn’t crazy. She is a victim and her sadness runs deep.

I am feeling her energy so strongly that it is affecting my physical body. I know this heavy chest I’m suddenly feeling is not mine nor is the tight throat. This did not start until I walked into the waiting room and saw her.

I am writing this now on my phone notepad as I watch her, mainly as a deterrent, so I don’t empathically become impulsive and blurt out talking to her.

When she’s filling out the forms she is agitated. I watch her shift and rub her forehead then finally throw her pen roughly into her purse. In that time period she is also angry.

I can see in my mind someone who feels like her father. He is dark haired. It is short, almost black, hair. He has a narrow, fairly pointed nose and sinister, cold dark eyes. He feels tall and skinny. Now I am sad and tearful inside my body, and my skin has chills with my arm hairs standing up. His energy is thick and mean.

She is reading through all the paperwork of disclaimers, and I am reading her.

My mouth is watering through some nausea. I count my breaths to calm down, reminding myself to stay steady.

My therapist comes through the front door and briefly cuts the connection as she walks between us.

“I’ll be right with you.” She says to me as she heads to the back, leaving me alone with the girl again.

Now I see his hand. He is holding a belt that is folded in half, and his hand is more into the middle of it and not towards the belt buckle. He was a disciplinarian who favored exact blows of holding the belt in a more controlled way, as opposed to swinging it and letting it land anywhere on her body.

I want to ask her. I want to verify what I’m seeing. I am deeply fighting this urge. I don’t see small child sexual abuse. I see consistent physical abuse. I do see sexual satiation in her older life, a leaning toward zoning out through sexual escapades of feeling good in the moment.

As she reads her papers, I am feeling her mind, which is currently split between the memories she is about to have to talk about and what she is trying to focus in on reading and absorbing.

I can’t ever say what I see directly to the person I see it about. It’s invasive and could be triggering to them. It’s such a hard position for me to be in when I feel so many multiple things. I want to comfort them. I also so, so badly always want to know if what I’m seeing is correct.

Yet, I cannot say to strangers, “I see your father holding a belt.”

This could cause more trauma for them, and I’m just not comfortable doing that, so I release it.

These moments are sometimes difficult for me as an Empath. I feel compelled to connect to a person in these moments. It’s part of why too much public activity is not an active choice for me.

I can spend a lot of time seeing into someone’s life, something I consider a gift that I cannot necessarily use for anything openly. I can give quiet empathy or only talk about it, if the other person initiates it.

As I watch her, I see she is struggling with something inside of her, something she isn’t sure she wants to talk about. Something with her father. She is having conflicted feelings of having to talk about her father. I am trying to figure out what that is, I get a slight sense she feels sorry for him at times for some reason, maybe his own childhood or times when he was good to her.

She does not look up or over at me once. She is emotionally frozen in time, memories and pain in her own space.

I wish I could tell her that I know this feeling; this throat lump I am physically feeling from her right now. She is just beginning this healing journey. I want to reach out badly, if just to say, I see and understand.

I wonder sometimes if I relayed to someone what I saw, if it would give them validation or comfort. Especially people like her, who come into my field waves very, very strongly.

Yet, I always stay silent. Right now I am pushing away the urge to speak with her by sitting here writing this out on my phone instead.

Post therapy continuance:

My therapist opened the door at this time to call me back to her office. I didnt see the other woman again.

When empathic energy displays images of other people’s lives, it takes constraint to resist the urge to give them a hug.

I have a compulsion that I’m going to reveal. It’s something that naturally happens in my mind. It doesn’t stress me out, particularly. I do it in seconds. I do it every day, all day long. It doesn’t interfere with my life, as I see it, mainly because I can do it so quickly and as of now, I don’t search out the formula just so I can do it. However, when the formula arrives it is definitely going to happen in my mind.

A common place I do it this is in traffic or if I have to stand in lines, wait in a doctor’s office, doing it with the magazine from the waiting room, my phone, anywhere that the formula exists to allow the compulsion, it will happen.

I’ll use a license plate as a simple example:

XKY369

3 + 6 = 9 + 9 = 18

1 + 8 = 9

Single Reduction: 9

Every day, anytime I encounter number series I immediately, within seconds, reduce them to a single number. There is never a time I will not do it. I don’t fight the urge to do it. I suppose the answer would be of what reaction would I have if I tried not to do it. Why frustrate myself, in my opinion. Reduce and move on.

There’s a duality existing when what we long for finally arrives. In that moment we are tasked with facing it. Now, I am going back inside. I am choosing this journey. While still somewhat tired from writing “Cult Child”, I want to keep myself surfing this wave lest it all disappear.

As I am writing “Rise of Sila” I am facing some extremely harsh realities. I am diving into teenage stories that bring more realizations of the emotional intensity and aftermath being an abused child had formed.

In some ways, we became a predator as a teenager and young adult. I wasn’t brought to that realization until today, talking with my therapist about teenage moments that as I write, I realize are filled with an incredible amount of shame.

I sat talking with my therapist, and she was so beautifully raw with me. Softly facing it. She asked me, “What would you know right now, today, do if you met a teenager like the one who sometimes came out in you? How would you treat her?”

I know what I would do today. I would empathize with her, hold her and do everything for her that I was screaming for. I would want to know what happened to cause her so much pain. I would see the need for love. I would reach out and give her a voice. I would believe her. I wouldn’t judge her.

“Then as you write your teenage experiences, that’s how you treat yourself. With understanding.”

Is this what I am tasked for in this life cycle? Is this why I took this mission; to stand in the footsteps of the shame, holding the highs and the lows of every human who experiences child abuse, teenage wildness and criminal behavior; standing firmly inside of owning it? Am I to be a split open example of how painful it is to heal? Am I to be a warrior of the journey of human mind control survival?

When the switch happened as a young girl, I didn’t realize the totality of its many manifestations, until I sat down to it write it out. I didn’t know until I looked back, how formed we had become and how utterly out of control the wheel had been spun.

As I drove home today, I thought to myself, I know why Lot told his wife not to look back. It had nothing to do with religion or the tale of a sinful city. It was a metaphor that sometimes going back can grind us to salt if we’re not strong enough. Lot’s wife wasn’t strong enough, so she crumbled.

but if you don’t want it, the full heart and the thriving; if you are wound tightly inside the cusp of your victimoness, afraid that if you shine no one will notice, your hands will grow bruises and your fingers will become weak from gripping so deeply to the pain. change has to rise in you with the strength of infinite passion. you must make the decision to find out who you are beneath the fog and clouds which continuously drift inside your energy. introspection is an art. it is when you say this day belongs to no one else but you. it’s when you only listen to the blues for the rhythms not the tears, because you have chosen colorful moments that reconnect you to your own ethereal existence. it’s when you choose you. ~Vennie~

When I create art it is usually in random spaces of time surrounding emotional overflow which needs to be expelled. Free flow ability is an important element for me to be able to live a self-healthy lifestyle.

When a local woman came across my art and contacted me, she told me that she found my recurring theme of the anime warrior compelling in regards to her child, who has struggled with personal mental situations. As the mother shared why she wanted me to do a piece for her teenager, I could relate both as a mother myself and as the once raging teenager.

I was thrilled to find out that the teenager also loves anime, color and is sensitive to the world. I was even more excited when mom gave me creative freedom.

I really love coding pieces with positive elements and energy. There are patterns and codes in old sketches, in new paintings and even in old journals. This piece is filled with strength and self worth to be passed on to a young person who is struggling inside just like I did and still do.

I don’t do many pieces for others, so when I have the opportunity to do so, I feel humbled and honored. This one flowed and spilled out. The process was cathartic. I finished it feeling re-empowered in parts of myself.

I am an advent child, standing in the ruins of a forgotten city. I cherish everything.

Yesterday while heading home from an appointment, my head was swirling. Things are changing in my life so quickly, and not all of it is “bad”, per say. It’s just that change in general takes some time for me to balance into.

I’m a planner.
I like lists.
I need schedules and reminders.

These changes happening are not allowing for any of that. I am forced into a space of waiting things out without any surety of what the future holds.

Back to yesterday. Moderate freak out. My mind went into victim mentality immediately. Shut down. It sounds something like this:

“Fuck it. I am exhausted. My emotional body can’t take another blow or another surfing wave.”. and on and on letting myself just feel the emotion of it all.

Then I spiraled down into thoughts of why really, I’ve pretty much accomplished what I’ve come to do. “I’ll be famous when I’m dead.” grandious kind of thoughts.

Critical thinking (I call her Knowing) stepped in. She whispered in my left ear as she always does.

“Come on, Ven. Gratitude.”

And so it was that I found myself verbally, out loud, listing all of the things and people I am blessed to have in my life.

By the time I arrived home, my emotions had made a startlingly quick recovery.

I ended up soending the evening finishing posts to submit as a guest blogger for two blogs. AND I worked on a painting that I have not touched in over a year.

I believe in two parts of therapy with fervor:

Gratitude
Creativity

Today I woke up feeling charged and focused, knowing that the next couple of months will be a great emerging; morphing more into my future.